


Evolution

by CaffeinatedWriter



Category: Bully (Video Games)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Illness, trans!pete
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 05:39:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14742977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffeinatedWriter/pseuds/CaffeinatedWriter
Summary: They go through a lot of stages with the evolution of their relationship.





	Evolution

They go through a lot of stages with the evolution of their relationship.

In the beginning, it’s the ever constant fluidity of change that comes with the formation of childhood friends. They settle from very young strangers to kids who can’t remember not knowing each other despite remembering in vivid detail the circumstances of how they met.

There’s a sacrifice of some of the expected comfort that comes with that for the sheer passion that Gary puts into pursuing Pete’s long-term interest. But even that eventually quiets into a less intense but no less sincere constant as they enter middle school.

Gary’s pointed focus is the background noise of a relationship that only makes sense to them.

By the end of eighth grade, Pete and Gary function flawlessly as a unit. As flawlessly as they can, and admittedly, they’re too young. It falls apart to teenage insecurity and nervous miscommunication and the realization that broken pieces can be made to fit together but shatter too easily under pressure.

Pete feels the absence of Gary in the exposure of all his jagged edges where Gary’s own had once settled, bared and vulnerable.

People do not look at him the same way in those months that he is _just Pete_ and all the collective single moments in his life that he had craved to be judged as an individual didn’t compare to the dragging eternity that was life without Gary Smith.

Following middle school, Pete finds that he is a whole and complete person. It doesn’t matter if people think he’s boring or stupid or prudish; living his truth is so vastly superior to conforming to an empty lie.

It’s important to him that it’s acknowledged so when he then says that Gary leaves a hole inside of him, it’s not interpreted incorrectly.

Pete doesn’t need Gary but a want is capable of toeing that line to need so closely, it might as well be the same thing.

They fall back into friendship too easily. It’s something they both know even without the whispers of a nosy town who knows them too well to understand so little. Pete knows Gary gets it too in the way he won’t allow himself to slot back into the space he left behind.

In hindsight, it was silly to worry about falling apart again when Gary was actively avoiding that probability by not letting them build up again at all. That boy is nothing if not guarded but Pete wasn’t familiar with quite that many walls.

Pete concedes. 

A lot has changed since first grade. Since ninth grade. And he feels at this point, maybe it’s okay to love and be loved. He’s watched it fall apart. Knows exactly what the worst is that can happen and even still, it’s nothing to the idea that he and Gary might eventually part ways for good.

After graduation, he could leave this town and never look back. Meet some nice guy who doesn’t know how Pete got the scar behind his left knee or why Pete’s dad welcomes him to the family so readily. Maybe start his own family even though Pete has never really seen himself as anyone’s dad as much as he seeks the role to care. 

He could find a whole new purpose in life, be fulfilled for the rest of his days, and he knows that Gary Smith would still be the last thing on his mind at the end of it all.

When Gary tells him he loves him for the first time in too many years and then looks entirely too surprised at himself, like maybe he wants to take it back, Pete doesn’t hesitate to contain any possible apologies with his lips.

It’s ridiculous to say so but he feels the instant that they slot back together seamlessly, the same broken parts but Pete has learned a lot in the time that he’s been _just_ _Pete_ and the fruition of that is that just Pete and just Gary can form the foundation of something much better.

They fall into a new evolution. Familiar but different.

Pete finds there’s something of a difference between strangers becoming friends and friends becoming more. Because Pete knows Gary but he doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge when social boundaries blur.

Because they’re childhood friends, still, always. At the base of it all, Gary is his best friend. And Gary is also the boy who sometimes thinks about him naked which is crazy because Pete still has days where _he_ struggles with thinking about him naked. 

He finds himself surprisingly okay with that and he’s not sure what to do with that knowledge either.

What he finds is that they’ve always navigated each other with a careless lack of caution that came from the early establishment that it was okay to make mistakes as long as they were corrected. And they make mistakes, by the boatload. It’s surprising how sturdy they feel for the effort.

Gary has bad days. 

That’s a simple way of putting it when in reality, Gary’s days are on a spectrum and that’s something Pete only really realized recently. And it was never his responsibility to know until he made it so but he thinks there are things that would be different if he had. 

He reminds himself that things are different now that he does, and that means something too.

There are days that Pete knows the universe did not align in just the right way, when Gary has been quiet and contained, and there’s nothing Pete can do about it. The way Gary can not realign the universe for him when the responsibility of existing weighs too heavy.

They don’t fix the cracks. They accommodate. They appreciate the cracks for what they are and what they mean. They acknowledge that something – someone – is not worthless because it shows sign of wear.

It’s not easy to be in a relationship. Pete sees that in the people around them. Doesn’t need first hand experience to cement it but it does anyways. It’s hard.

Gary looks at him now from time to time with sedated smiles and says, “I’m gonna marry you,” with half the passion of their childhood and twice the sincerity and Pete believes him.

And through their evolution, Pete knows the only real answer is, “I’m gonna let you."

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can find me [here](http://www.beathimbacktotheghetto.tumblr.com).


End file.
